Queens, New York City, New York. (Adobe Stock Images)

After human remains were discovered during construction in 2011, community leaders are again pressing the city to protect the historic site.

Beneath a parking lot in Elmhurst, Queens, lies a piece of Black history that advocates say deserves far more than asphalt.

A new effort is underway to secure landmark status for a burial ground believed to contain the remains of as many as 300 freed Black Americans — including members of one of the earliest generations of free African Americans in Queens.

The site, located near Corona Avenue, was once home to St. Mark African Methodist Episcopal Church, which was established by the community after New York abolished slavery in 1827. The land was purchased in 1828 by four men who had been freed.

“Them also being able to purchase the land in the first place was a significant thing,” the Rev. Kimberly Detherage, pastor of St. Mark AME Church, told ABC7NY.

The history of the property extends beyond religion. Detherage said it also served as an educational and community gathering space.

“It was also a place of education. It was utilized as a school. People came like Frederick Douglas and others and gave speeches,” she said.

The church eventually sold the property in the 1930s and moved to Jackson Heights. But the burial ground remained.

Its significance became impossible to ignore in 2011, when construction workers excavating the property discovered human remains. Among them was the remarkably preserved body of a young Black woman inside an airtight iron coffin. Ten human remains have since been found at the site, according to ABC7NY’s report.

Now, advocates want the city to formally recognize the site and transform it into a memorial honoring those buried there and the community they built.

Detherage is also asking New York City to purchase the property, which would allow the burial ground to be preserved rather than remaining hidden beneath a modern development.

For her, preserving the site is about more than remembering the dead. It is about recognizing what Black New Yorkers built after emancipation.

“To know the type of jobs and families and what their desires and even with regards to their economy and to know this was a rich thriving economy,” Detherage said.

That history, advocates argue, should not remain buried.

The push to landmark the property offers New York another opportunity to acknowledge a Black community that helped shape Queens — and to ensure its story survives long after the asphalt is gone.